At 2:45am on April Fool's Day, 1978, 29-year-old dentist Harry Akers marched 100 metres down a dark, empty street in Bundaberg, accompanied only by his dog, Jaffa, and wielding a placard saying: "The majority is not omnipotent. The majority can be wrong. The majority is capable of tyranny."
It was raining heavily. It was tense. He was observed by two supporters, a journalist and, nearby, a car full of plain-clothes police officers.
Nothing happened.
Forty-four years later, in a very different Queensland, it might not seem like much, but at the time it was an act of singular bravery.
Dr Akers is now virtually off the grid – despite for many years continuing to practice dentistry in Bundaberg before becoming a University of Queensland researcher – after enduring what he says were years of "both ridicule and hate".
"Sure, some opinions changed after the Fitzgerald Inquiry Report, but one never forgets the past," he says.
"In my opinion, one had to live in provincial Queensland in the Joh era to understand what was going on."
'The Deep North'
Bjelke-Petersen was the Queensland leader from 1968 to 1987. He was ardently conservative and outspokenly anti-protest and anti-civil liberties.
The Fitzgerald Inquiry (1987-89) brought into the open what many Queenslanders had known for years: the government under Sir Joh was systemically corrupt. He was referred to by author Ewan Whitton as "The Hillbilly Dictator".
His Country/National party shored up its power through gerrymandering and an all-powerful police force which was equally rotten.
A secretive unit of the police known as the special branch was used to intimidate those who were considered subversives, spying on or infiltrating dissident groups.
"The atmosphere in Queensland at the time was highly intolerant," says President of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties Terry O'Gorman — the counsel who cross-examined Bjelke-Petersen during the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
"Joh had been in power since 1968. By 1977 he had an iron-like grip on power and maintained that grip through to 1987 when he made his ill-fated 'Joh for PM' campaign.
"The era was one of a highly conservative state of Queensland where Joh Bjelke-Petersen milked that conservatism for all it was worth.
"Queensland was widely referred to in the media in other states as 'The Deep North'."
When Queenslanders' rights to protest were revoked
In the wake of anti-Vietnam War, anti-apartheid protests around the 1971 Springboks tour and marches opposing uranium mining in Queensland, Sir Joh and the police force adopted an ever more hard-line position against dissidents.
On September 5, 1977, Bjelke-Petersen announced a cabinet decision which banned political street marches.
Nine days later, an amendment to Section 57A of The Traffic Act was rushed through parliament.
The police were now sole arbitrators of march permits, unless the applicant appealed to the Supreme Court.
Police commissioner Terry Lewis — who was later jailed for corruption — would have the final say on permits. Effectively it meant a ban on street marches.
"Protest marches are a thing of the past," Sir Joh announced.
"Nobody, including the Communist Party or anyone else, is going to turn the streets of Brisbane into a forum.
"Protest groups need not bother applying for permits to stage marches — because they won't be granted."
That pronouncement led to an amping up of demonstrations.
On October 22, 1977, about 5,000 people marched a few blocks from King George Square to protest the new law — 418 of them were arrested.
"The overwhelming number of people arrested on that Saturday afternoon were just mums and dads from the suburbs," says Mr O'Gorman.
"They weren't hard left-wing types.
"It had brought about significant public disquiet.
"The premier, with no debate, with no upper house, changed the law with no notice."
The "right to march" movement was born in the state, and demonstrations continues for years. Political activists and ordinary Queenslanders were arrested in large numbers.
Bjelke-Petersen and his National Party remained popular with voters, however, especially in regional and rural areas.
When is a march a procession? When it involves a horse, of course
When the ban on marches was announced, Dr Akers decided he wanted to point out how preposterous the new law was.
On March 10, 1978, he told the media he had applied for a permit for a protest march.
He informed police he would be marching 100 metres only, with his dog Jaffa, down an unnamed, unmarked no-through road on The Hummock (a 96m-high volcanic remnant on the outskirts of Bundaberg) at 2:45am on April 1.
The street was in a new subdivision with no housing — a couple of hundred metres from Dr Akers's home. It was virtually impossible for the protest to cause anyone disruption.
He assured police he was a pacifist and the march would be peaceful.
And he applied for a permit to carry the placard bearing a quote, "plagiarised", he says, from Thomas Jefferson (though it more likely originated from the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, who he wrote of the "tyranny of the majority").
Inspector Ken Seaniger of the Bundaberg police rejected the application, saying a permit could not be granted because it was a protest march.
"The legal issues around the protest were intriguing," Dr Akers says.
"One person on a street, by law, did not, at that time, constitute a procession. One person with a horse on a street did, at that time, constitute a procession."
But what about one man and a dog?
"Whether one person with a restrained dog in a protest constituted a procession was, in the legal sense, even more obscure."
Dr Akers decided he had four options:
- one, he could turn up and march without a dog — that would be legal as one person on a road would not constitute a procession
- two, bring Jaffa (Dr Akers was not sure of the legality of marching with a dog. It may or may not have constituted a procession)
- three, turn up and march with another protester (this would certainly be regarded as a protest march, and illegal – and would result in the arrest of both)
- four, say it was an April Fool's joke and not show up.
Dr Akers chose option two.
"The bitumen street had no footpath — the police could not direct me off the road as there was an excavated dirt-gutter (with adjacent vertical rock face) on one side and no gutter (with a very steep decline) on the other.
"Two people attended the protest with me, Phillip Barnsley, a railway employee, and Peter Leonard, later a journalist, as well as Scott Nicol, a Courier-Mail photographer, who took one picture of me.
"Inspector Seaniger made it clear that if anyone stepped onto the road with me, all would be arrested."
Dr Akers said it was raining heavily and visibility was poor.
Mr Leonard and Mr Barnsley stood on the side of Heathwood Crescent: not the road Dr Akers was marching on.
"Police verbally indicated that, at that point in time, they were not interested in a test case over whether a man and a dog constituted a procession," Dr Akers says.
"This possible ambiguity in the definition of a procession carried consequences for the legality or illegality of the protest.
"Because it was a protest, police would not give a permit. If I took any action that made it a procession, I would be arrested
"I had no permit for the placard, which was on a stick, and probably illegal."
The plain clothes police officers chose not to arrest Dr Akers.
'Where was this fool, Akers?'
During the Fitzgerald Inquiry, Mr O'Gorman raised Dr Akers's one-man stand with Sir Joh on the final day of questioning.
O'Gorman: "Akers conducted his illegal procession in the wee hours of the morning on April Fool's Day, observed by only one carload of plain clothes detectives.
"Now really…"
Bjelke-Petersen: "Where was this fool, Akers?"
O'Gorman: "Doesn't this highlight the absolute absurdity and tyranny of this law?"
Bjelke-Petersen: "No it does not."
"Simply because you cannot. If the law is the law, it has to be observed.
"I can't, for example, simply go out in the street and block the whole street, even for half a minute, and out in the middle of the road and block everything. And neither can he for a couple of hundred yards, same principle."
Judge Tony Fitzgerald: But Sir Joh, I think Mr O'Gorman's question is really: Might not Mr Akers and Jaffa have been granted a permit without any risk to the public?"
Bjelke-Petersen: "Yes, but sir, I'm sure you realise this was a try-on and just the thin edge of the wedge."
O'Gorman: "What? Might two people walk at 2:45am with two dogs?" (laughter)
Mr O'Gorman says he invoked Dr Akers's protest with Sir Joh for the same reason the dentist had marched in the first place — it highlighted the absurdity of the law.
"It was very effective," he said of the march.
"The ridicule against the law and the government that flowed from that action was really much more effective than the endless Saturday night TV images of people getting arrested, Saturday after Saturday.
"The arrests for street marches in Brisbane went on for months and months and months.
"And his tactic of highlighting the sheer futility of the law, through his own ridicule, by the humorous act of marching with his dog, Jaffa.
"It just highlighted to a somewhat jaded population the absolute absurdity of those laws.
"Sir Joh eventually admitted under cross examination that the changing of the law was 'pure politics'."
Mr O'Gorman says he believes Queensland's conservatism has gradually been eroded in part due to several decades of interstate migration, particularly in the state's south-east.
But regional areas, he says, remained particularly enthralled with Sir Joh right up until the Fitzgerald Inquiry, when many learnt for the first time the depth of corruption in the ruling party.
"It was a pretty gutsy thing for someone in a very conservative place like Bundaberg to do."
Mr O'Gorman believes the police held back on arresting Dr Akers because they realised it would have brought "unbridled ridicule" on them, particularly from the southern states.
A lifetime of consequences
The Fitzgerald Inquiry would lead to Sir Joh being charged with perjury, the jailing of police commissioner Terry Lewis, and the end of several other political careers.
Sir Joh fell on his own sword on December 1, 1987.
Dr Akers doesn't much like to talk about the past. Now that he is retired he has no phone or social media accounts.
"I had a special branch file and endured arrests," he says.
"I have, to this day, a conviction registered against my name.
"I had to resign from the Australian Dental Association for a year because of my anti-Joh activities.
"The state ADAQ by-laws were amended the following year and I then re-joined the Australian Dental Association."
Dr Akers is now an honorary member of ADAQ and received the ADAQ Service Award in 2010.
He holds a PhD, with close to 45 peer-reviewed publications in a wide range of international, Australian and Queensland-based journals.
He has never been a member of any political party.
Jaffa died in 1982 after being hit by a car.
